Amid the distressing news from Charlottesville and the ensuing call to remove Confederate monuments from public spaces across the South, Westchester residents were surprised to learn that Greenburgh had its own Confederate monument. One hundred and twenty years ago, a Confederate veterans group in New York purchased plots for its members at the Mt. Hope Cemetery in unincorporated Greenburgh (Hastings-on-Hudson zip code) and crowned the spot with a sixty- foot granite obelisk. Prompted by the renewed attention to the meaning and future of Confederate monuments, the Journal News carried a story last month about the Confederate monument that sparked a lively on-line debate. While a few commentators demanded the monument’s removal because it memorialized an army that fought to preserve slavery, the opinions trended toward leaving the obelisk in place as a symbol of reconciliation and a tribute to the sacrifice of soldiers. In addition, the monument’s defenders pointed out that, unlike the Southern monuments slated for removal, the Mt. Hope obelisk stood on private cemetery property.
As public attention wandered to other matters, Hastings Mayor Peter Swiderski released a statement seconded by Greenburgh Supervisor Paul Feiner describing the obelisk as a “monument to reconciliation.” Swiderski quoted Postmaster General Wilson (a Confederate veteran) who remarked at the 1897 dedication ceremony that “[t]he only rivalry in the future [between the former opponents] will be generous emulation in the performance of the duties of citizenship of a common country.” Finally, Swiderski found validation for the monument in the honor granted by the Sons of Union Veterans chapters that continue to hold annual ceremonies at the plot. Supervisor Feiner directed attention to the lesson that we can learn from those veterans who, in 1897, “decided to put aside their past differences and be friends.”
Swiderski and Feiner are correct in their recapitulation of the intent and spirit behind the monument. The dedication was reported by newspapers across the nation, particularly in the South, as a symbol of reconciliation as veterans of blue and grey, more than three decades after Appomattox, joined together in mutual solemnity and dignity to honor former comrades and enemies alike. Few objections were raised at the time. In fact, the May 1897 ceremony at Mt. Hope capped a series of vivid, public appearances in New York where Confederate veterans, wearing the old grey uniforms and carrying their banners, marched before cheering crowds, including the dedication of Grant’s Tomb and an event honoring Admiral Farragut. The Confederate veterans drew such applause on New York streets that an observer might wonder who had actually won the war. Reconciliation had indeed reached its apex: reconciliation, that is, among white Americans.
While white Americans celebrated national reconciliation in the 1890s at ceremonies like the Mt. Hope monument dedication, millions of formerly enslaved African Americans and their descendants experienced the war’s legacy differently. The Reconstruction era, when Southern blacks experienced dramatic advances in civil and political rights, was long in the past by 1897. The multi-racial governments established in the former Confederate states in the aftermath of the Civil War, and which endorsed the rights of all citizens, collapsed in the 1870s as Confederate veterans adopted Klan and Regulator disguises and launched an insurrection. These white “redeemers” resorted to terror to suppress black voting, intimidate government officials, and exploit Northern war exhaustion to seize control of the former Confederate states and restore unquestioned white supremacy.
The redeemers initially found themselves stymied by the constitutional legacy of the Union’s triumph in the Civil War: the XIII Amendment barring slavery, the XIV Amendment ensuring black citizenship, and the XV Amendment promoting voting rights. Determined to retain power, Southern whites resorted to a web of legal and regulatory schemes imposed over two decades which nearly eliminated black voting, restricted blacks’ legal rights, and segregated public spaces and facilities. The result was the pervasive, oppressive system better known as “Jim Crow.” The legal system sanctioned this imposition of apartheid, culminating in the Supreme Court’s notorious Plessy v. Ferguson decision in May 1896 – twelve months prior to the Mt. Hope monument dedication – affirming the validity of “separate but equal.”
Some Northerners did object as their purportedly vanquished Confederate foes deliberately undermined the freedom component of the war’s twin goals of “liberty and union.” But while the Northern public abhorred slavery, it was divided on the status of African Americans. Many – perhaps most – shared the prejudices of their white, reconciled Southern friends, and believed that blacks should be segregated and confined to an inferior status. Few believed in black civil rights to the degree that they were willing to dissent from the spirit of reconciliation that prevailed in the 1890s. Who wanted to spoil the reconciliation party by protesting the denial of civil rights to blacks including thousands of United States Colored Troops veterans? It would take many more decades before photos of the disfigured corpse of Emmett Till and horrific televised images coming from Selma spurred white Americans to remember that African Americans were full citizens too.
What does this history mean for Greenburgh’s Confederate obelisk? Swiderski and others are indeed correct that the monument was funded, constructed, and inscribed in the spirit of national reconciliation. The dedication and later ceremonies at Mt. Hope echoed a national will to put division in the past and to honor brave young men from both sides who fought and died in the war. And, as many have pointed out, the monument does stand on private ground (although that land benefits from its tax exemption and the obelisk looms over a major intersection). Now that public awareness has been raised that the Mt. Hope obelisk honors Confederate soldiers who fought to fracture our nation in pursuit of the defense of slavery, the obelisk should remain in place to remind us of the fragility of our liberty and the threat from those who seek its destruction. When we drive by the monument near the corner of Saw Mill River Road and Jackson Avenue, we should remember too that the spirit of reconciliation exemplified by the Mt. Hope obelisk helped salve the nation’s wounds but also paved the path for the entrenchment of white supremacy and the oppression of African Americans for generations.
